AUNTY!
AFRICAN WOMEN IN THE FRAME, 1870 TO THE PRESENT Selections from THE MCKINLEY COLLECTION Curated by CATHERINE E. MCKINLEY & LAYLAH AMATULLAH BARRAYN Aunty! is a unique collaboration between Catherine E. McKinley, a writer and collector, and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a photographer and curator, both Black women, presenting works where the subjects of the collection are women. Aunty! features over a hundred rare and original images, ranging from portraiture to stereographs, postcards to cartes de visite, taken as early as 1870 and as recently as 2013. Photographers include European and African colonial male owned studios—named and unnamed—and celebrated contemporary African female artists, spanning more than 143 years of the the colonial and post-colonial eras. This exhibition takes up the idea and figure of “Aunty” and the nuances of this naming. At once an expression of love and affection, Aunty is an honorific across most Black world cultures—a recognition of a feminine power rooted in indigeneity. As powerfully, it connotes the violence of the original colonial construction of the word: the corporeal, dark, servile figure, buffoonish or sexualized in her role of colonial servant. It is also a name burdened by African and Diaspora grapplings with gender, and often troubling constructions of motherhood, sexuality, etc. This exhibition looks at Auntys through the troubling lens of colonialism by including a few earlier photographic images of the late 1870s, as well as the colonial and postcolonial lens of African male photographers, through vernacular images of post-Independence partygoers and studio sittings, and contemporary renderings. For McKinley and Barrayn, Aunty! is an attempt to look head on at the beauty of the images and also their more often discomfiting legacies, and the moments where the subjects look back at the viewer reassuringly, with a sense of control of her image, and pleasure in herself.
November 15, 2018 – January 31, 2019 Opening Reception: Thursday November 15, 6–9pm
PORTRAIT MASTERS
Celebrated masters Seydou Keita (Mali) and Malick Sidibe (Mali) are featured here with images by other African studios of legend, including James Barnor (Ghana), Abderoumane Sakalay (Mali), Adama Sylla (Senegal), and many anonymous authors. Working between 1920 and 1983—eras spanning the later half-century of colonialism through the era of Structural Adjustment—each photographer captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women sitters. One memorable heroine reappears in several frames captured between the 1950s and late 1970s, reflecting the evolution of a nation from pre-independence Gold Coast to post-independence Ghana (1957), as it entered an era of liberation politics decidedly influenced by American Black Power. A portrait by French photographer Bernard Matussiere reflects a smouldering power and an awareness of both agency and vulnerability in singer and musician Fela’s Queens, style icons for women across the continent and Black women internationally. As with earlier eras, many of these images circulated as postcards, as cartes de visite, as colonial propaganda, advertising, and communication in marriage bids. But most were commissioned by the sitter and were hung and enjoyed at home and, produced in multiples, shared among family and friends.
Two Young Ye-Ye Girls with Sunglasses, 1965 Abderoumane Sakaly Mali
Eva, London, c. 1960s James Barnor UK/Ghana
Nuit de 31 December, 1969, 2011 Malick Sidibe Mali
Untitled, 1952, 2001 Seydou Keita Mali
Aunt y DeiDei, 1970s Unknown Accra, Ghana
Untitled #460, 1956–1957 Seydou Keita Mali
Aunt y Korama and Aggie, c. 1960s Unknown Accra, Ghana
Aunt y Korama I, c. 1970s Unknown Accra, Ghana
Aunt y Korama II, c. 1975 Unknown Accra, Ghana
Aut y Korama IV, c. 1960s Unknown Accra, Ghana
Fela Queens backstage, 1983 Bernard Matussiere European tour
Untitled, 1952 Unknown Senegal
Femme Peulh du Niger, 1970 Malick Sidibe Mali
Untitled, c. 1960 Unknown Senegal
Lion Girls, undated Unknown Senegal
Marie Rose, undated Al Hadji Bassirou Sanni Mopti, Mali
Perfect Aunties, undated Unknown Tchad (?)
Woman With Umbrella, undated Unknown Togo (?)
Woman with Flowers, undated Unknown Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
1939/1945 Adama Sylla St. Louis, Senegal
1939/1945 Adama Sylla St. Louis, Senegal
Untitled, c. 1970s Adama Sylla St. Louis, Senegal
Untitled, c. 1950s Ed. Gevaert Senegal
Aunt y Korama III, 1966 Dan. Minolta, Accra Accra, Ghana
Fanti Women in Full Dress, c. 1910 Jacob Vitta, Tarkwa Gold Coast, Ghana
Femme en Tenue Locale, 1911 Unknown Senegal
Senegalese Woman, undated Unknown Morocco (?)
Nos elegantes a Djenne, undated H. Danel, a Kayes Mali
Type de Femme Oualoff, 1924 Unknown St. Louis, Senegal
Une Guernete, c. 1900 CL Albaret St. Louis, Senegal
Untitled, undated Unknown Senegal
Malinke Woman, undated Unknown Senegal
Untitled, c. 1950s Unknown Mali
Untitled, c. 1970s Feyre Senegal
Untitled, c. 1960s Unknown Togo (?)
Abena’s Week, c. 1975 Unknown Benin
Dahomey Women, c. 1920s Unknown Benin
Untitled, undated Unknown Benin
Unknown, undated Unknown Mali (?)
Grace Tinuke Oyelude, Miss Nigeria 1957 Unknown Nigeria
A Nioro (Soudan)—Une femme d’un traitant ouolofes, c. 1910 Unknown Mali
Friends Who Know What To do, c. 1972 Unknown Accra, Ghana
Untitled, undated Unknown Ghana or Cote D’Ivoire
Femme Soussons, 1910 A. James Guinea
From the series, ‘The Red Studio’ Oumar Ly Podor, Senegal
Unknown, undated Unknown
Untitled, c. 1900 Unknown Madagascar
EARLY IMAGES
African entrepreneurs began to pick up the technology of photography by the late 1860s, soon after its arrival on the continent with colonial agents. This was just three decades after François Arago officially announced the invention of photography at the French Chamber of Deputies in 1839. The first photos in The Mckinley Collection are dated 1870. We have no other details regarding authorship or the sitters—very plainly clothed silhouettes in what we assume is a European studio because of the way they fit into a style of colonial typology-making, with little detail allowing us to place the subject in a broader context.
The Reverend JAmes Greaves, Black African, c. 1890 John Parkes Decker Nigeria or Benin
Untitled, 1880 Unknown
Untitled, c. 1870 Unknown Morocco (?)
Untitled, c. 1870 Unknown Senegal (?)
Untitled, undated Unknown Morocco
Unknown, c. 1920 –1930 Unknown
Untitled, c. 1870 Unknown Possibly an edition for La Exposition Colonial, France
Untitled, c. 1870 Unknown Morocco (?)
THE COLONIAL STUDIO
In European studios spanning the 1860s-1970s—images of African women were informed by a long arc of propaganda-making in support of European imperialist projects dating back to the 1400s. The result was a preponderance of nudes, and images fixated on hairstyles, body cicatrization, puberty rites, “women’s work” and “tribal” typologies. Many African photographers working at the same time would engage these tropes, as would later eras of African photographers (1950s-present), revisiting the shots of a woman’s back or hairstyle, but in a way that removed the colonial gaze and replaced it with the loving or honorific, but where a male one still mediated. Behind the European images is the knowledge of relationships between white men and Black female sitters where at best a grave power imbalance lies; often intimations of sexual liaisons or coercion are revealed. We don’t know many of the actual authors of these images. In the photographs of Sierra Leone’s celebrated Lisk-Carew brothers, Alphonse and Arthur, who opened their Freetown studio in 1904, the sitters reclaim a dignity, and the viewer can witness a palpable ease in relation to works of similar composition intended to circulate abroad. A rare photo of “The Reverend James Greaves, Black African,” circa 1890 by John Parkes Decker, a Gambian photographer, of a young girl attending her father disrupts the European gaze but bears a curiously colonialist title. “Coumba, fillette ma blancheuesse, Clotilde,” an image from 1908, is placed in a frame made with industrial tape fashioned for a colonial home. Studios in Conakry, Guinea; St. Louis, Senegal; Accra, Ghana have among them the most active, aesthetically fine, and significant production. Central African Republic girls suggestively model a “Premiere corset” and a “Premirer chemise,” costly articles that would have been ordered from Europe. A woman in a curious cap, is assumed to be dressed and photographed as part of a French Colonial Expo. A wealthy Senegalese Wolof noblewoman in the 1920s is dressed in costly indigo clothing and jewelry and photographed with dignity, the sitter in control of her image. The colonial studio—African and European— was a complex and storied collision of power and agency, beauty and the tragic.
Accordion, 1930 Unknown Kapushi, Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
La Femme de Sultane de Mwenda et sa servante, c. 1900 Gabriel L. Panda, Katanga, Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo
Femme de Dos, Undated Unknown
Woman with Coin Choker, undated Edition E. Bessieres Leopoldville-Brazzaville, Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Untitled, 1905 H. Roger Viollet Studio, Paris Cote D’Ivoire
Une Elegante de Conakry, c. 1910 A. James, Conakr y Guinea
Femme Soussouns, c. 1910 A. James, Conakr y Guinea
Muslim Woman, 1936 Unknown Eritrea
Bundoo Girls 1, c. 1920 Lisk-Carew Brothers Freetown, Sierra Leone
Bundoo Girls II, c. 1920 Lisk-Carew Brothers Freetown, Sierra Leone
Untitled, c. 1920 Unknown Guinea
Coumba, fillette ma blancheuesse, Clotilde, 1909 Unknown Senegal
Dahomey—Jeune femme du Niger, c. 1920 Unknown Dahomey, Benin
Baule Women, 1928 Unknown Ivor y Coast
Femme dahomeenne, c. 1900 Collection Geo. Wolber Benin
Dan (?) Woman, undated Unknown Cote D’Ivoire or Liberia
Mulheres da AFrica Oriental, c. 1910 Ed. J. P. Fernandes Mozambique
Weiber von Ost-Afrika, c. 1910 Unknown Tanzania
Gold Coast Beaut y, c. 1905 Photoholm-Lagos Gold Coast, Ghana
Untitled, undated Unknown Zanzibar
Femme Foulab (etude no. 2), c. 1914 Edit. G. Calvayrac— Mon Guiraud et Mader Guinea
Premiere chemise, 1920 L.R. Central African Republic
Premier Corset, 1920 L.R. Central African Republic
Princesse du Mayumbe, c. 1910 Unknown Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Type Toucoulour, c. 1900 Unknown Senegal
Little Nancy, Mai 1912, St. Louis, Senegal Unknown Senegal
Saint-Louis (Senegal), En place pour la pose, c. 1920 Unknown Senegal
La Femme de Sultane de Mwenda, c. 1900 Gabriel L. Panda, Katanga, Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
A Beaut y Parlour in Zanzibar, Africa, c. 1900 Keystone View Company, USA Zanzibar
Masked Swahili Women Holding a Fetish, c. 1910 Keystone View Company, USA Zanzibar
Native Woman, (Blant yre region, Zambia?), c. 1910 Unknown Zambia
Type de femme haratine— Oasis Sahariennes, undated Unknown Mauritania
Un petit Gourmand, c. 1920 Unknown Morocco
Type, Soudan Francais, c. 1929 Lauroy, ed. Mali
A quatre pattes, c. 1930 J. Geiser, phot. Alger Mali (?)
Jeune Femmes du Soudan, c. 1910 Collection du Comptoir Parisien, Conakr y Guinea
Untitled, 1960s (?) Unknown Sudan (?)
Zulu Method of Sleeping, 1900 B.W. Kilburn, LIttleton, NH South Africa
Diverses coiffures africaines, L’Afrique Qui Disparait!, 1929–1937 Casimir Zagourski Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Pinda, St. Louis, 1925 Unknown Senegal
Femmes Bassoundis se coiffant, c. 1950 Hougui Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Coiffure Foulbe, date unknown Unknown Cameroon
Untitled, undated Untitled Ethiopia (?)
Jeune Fille Muhutu de L’Urundi, c. 1930 Unknown Burundi
Type de Marocaine, undated Edit. Tehakerian Morocco
Femme Mousgoum, undated R. Pauleau Cameroon
Otufo Girls, Fetish Virgins Crobo Gold Coast Colony, c. 1910 Unknown Gold Coast, Ghana
Femme Peuhl, c. 1900 Edmond Fortier Senegal
Young Girl from Togo/North Cameroon, undated Unknown Togo/Cameroon
Femme Senegalaise en Madagascar, 1902 Unknown Senegal/Madagascar
Untitled, undated Unknown Morocco
Untitled, undated Unknown Senegal
Type de femme de Fort-Lamy, undated Photo R. Pauleau Tchad
Aunt y Nkor, c. 1970s Unknown Accra, Ghana
Untitled, 2013 Thabiso Sekgala South Africa
Far from Home, 2008–2009 Patricia Coffie (US/Ghana) New York
Teme, 2013 Fatoumata Diabate Mali
Phyllis: I Am Not Alone, 2010 Zina Saro-Wiwa Nigeria/UK/US
UNITED PHOTO INDUSTRIES GALLERY 16 Main St. #B Brooklyn, NY 11201 tel (718) 801 - 8099 email info@unitedphotoindustries.com web www.unitedphotoindustries.com
United Photo Industries is a New York based non-profit organization that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography. Since its founding in 2011, UPI has rapidly solidified its position in the public art landscape by continuing to showcase thought-provoking, challenging, and exceptional photography from across the globe. In its first 6 years, UPI has had the opportunity to present the work of more than 2,500 visual artists in gallery exhibitions and public art installations worldwide. Proudly devoted to cultivating strategic partnerships, creative collaborations, and community spirit, we have approached our goal of cultivating a wide, diverse audience for powerful photographic narratives with unrelenting zeal, working closely with photo festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations across the globe to create new exhibition opportunities. United Photo Industries’ marquee domestic initiative is Photoville — New York City’s premier free photo destination and one of the largest photography events in North America. A modular venue built from repurposed shipping containers, Photoville creates physical platform for photographers of all stripes to come together and interact — and for audiences to experience their work. Photoville each year exhibits hundreds of artists, with dozens of exhibitions, talks & workshops, and nighttime events in an outdoor beer garden.